GREENFIELD — If there’s one thing Greenfield-Central sprinter Savannah Lake doesn’t like doing, it’s losing.
The good thing for her, that doesn’t happen often.
The junior was a sectional, Hoosier Heritage Conference and Hancock County champion in both the 100-meter and 200-meter dash and is the Daily Reporter Hancock County Girls Track Athlete of the Year.
“It’s pretty impressive. To my knowledge, we haven’t had a sprinter, at least in recent history, that has been able to do that in those two events at Greenfield-Central. For her to kind of step in and be able to perform like that in both events all season was definitely impressive,” Greenfield-Central head coach Mike Foster said. “It speaks to her hard work and competitive drive to be able to do that, especially in meets where there’s a trial and finals, and she has to do both of those twice.”
It took until the Franklin Regional for Lake to experience a loss in the two events, but just barely.
She was runner-up in both races and still qualified for her second consecutive state final.
In 2022, she competed in just the 100, seeded in the 22nd spot.
This year, at state, she not only added another event but also improved upon her 100-meter seeding. She entered the day as the highest seeded county participant. She came in seeded sixth in the 100 and 12th in the 200.
“That in itself is an improvement right there,” Foster said. “She’s continuing to get better, and we look forward to what she can do her senior year.”
Her preliminary time of 25.65 seconds in the 200 gave her a 17th-place finish in the state, and her time of 12.38 in the 100 was good enough for 18th.
“Last year I was just hoping to make it, but this year seeing where I was ranked in the state, it kind of assured me that I could do both and make it there in both, and I’m very thankful that I did,” Lake said. “It’s more challenging because you have to worry about being tired and having to keep up with both events. But it just comes down to training though, which we worked on a lot.”
She credits that improvement to multiple things: a switch in her training, her competitiveness, and a former teammate.
Lake began running track in seventh grade, but it wasn’t until her freshman year at Greenfield-Central that she really began taking the sport seriously.
And for her, even with qualifying for state her sophomore season, she wasn’t seeing any real improvement from year-to-year. It wasn’t until a change in the way she trained this year that she really began to see massive improvements in her race times.
“I train at my training place in Indy and this year we switched up to more strength training, and I think that helped a ton,” Lake said. “Going from my freshman to sophomore season, I saw really no progress, and it was kind of disappointing, and then at the beginning of this season, I was seeing no progress again, so we switched to weight training. All of a sudden, my times just started to drop by a lot, which I was very excited to see.”
Couple that with her competitiveness and drive to constantly improve, and Lake has found the recipe for success.
“When I have a goal, I’ll do anything to go get it. When people are above me, I just try to focus on myself, but it’s always a goal to get better and better every day,” Lake said. “I just go as hard as I can in training, and then the races that I lose just really push me more and more to continue to get better, and that has helped me a ton in getting to where I am.”
This season she broke the school record in the 100 with a time of 12.05, and in the 200 she was .01 seconds off of the school record set last year by her former teammate Kayana Maroska.
Chasing Maroska isn’t anything new to Lake and is another reason she had as successful a season as she did this year.
A season ago, Lake got to see firsthand what it was like to advance to the state finals in two separate events. Maroska competed in both the 200 and 400 events at state, and Lake was right there with her all season in the 200.
“Savannah valued her as a teammate, and they got along great, but Savannah is very competitive. She didn’t necessarily like losing and being second,” Foster said. “I think that helped her get better for this year, though. Seeing that, and with how competitive she is, she just wanted to be better, and that’s what she did this year.”
“It’s always nice to have someone that you train with and can push you. I love her, and she texted me before I ran,” Lake said. “It’s always nice having someone that you looked up to in your freshman and sophomore seasons still support you.”
While Lake’s competitiveness has helped her be a two-time state finalist, this year was different for her. That ultra-competitiveness was still there, but it was also her ability to run more carefree that led to her success, and has her primed to repeat that success in the future.
“This season has also taught me to just relax, have fun, and enjoy what I’m doing rather than stressing everything so much,” Lake said. “Last year I was so worried and stressed about results that I didn’t really have any fun, but this year the more I let it go, the better I got and the more fun I had.”
